<!DOCTYPE HTML><html lang="en">
<HEAD>

<meta name="copyright" content="Copyright (c) IBM Corporation and others 2000, 2005. This page is made available under license. For full details see the LEGAL in the documentation book that contains this page." >

<meta charset="utf-8">
<LINK REL="STYLESHEET" HREF="../book.css" TYPE="text/css">
<TITLE>Standard Widget Toolkit</TITLE>

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" HREF="../book.css">
</HEAD>
<BODY>

<H1>The Standard Widget Toolkit</H1>

<P>The Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) is a widget toolkit for Java developers
that provides a portable API and tight integration with the underlying native
OS GUI platform.</P>

<P>Many low level UI programming tasks are handled in higher layers of the
Eclipse platform.  For example, JFace viewers and actions provide
implementations for the common interactions between applications and widgets.
However, knowledge of SWT is important for understanding how the rest of the
platform works.</P>


<h2>Portability and Platform Integration</h2>

<P>SWT defines a common portable API that is provided on all supported
platforms, and implements the API on each platform using native widgets
wherever possible.  This allows the toolkit to immediately reflect any
changes in the underlying OS GUI look and feel while maintaining a consistent
programming model on all platforms.</P>

</BODY>
</HTML>